Annotated Bibliography

Bell-Villada, Gene H. “Garcia Marquez and the Novel.” Latin American Literary
Review 23.25 (1985): 15-23. JSTOR. Web. 21 Nov 2011.
Bell-Villada explores Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work, One Hundred Years of Solitude as a redefining of history through the creation of a historical world tinted with fantastic elements. Marquez’s use of the all-knowing, but also, mythical narrator, portrays elements of the story in a matter-of-fact way. Bell-Villada argues that Garcia Marquez utilized every possible human role in his texts, ventured further than the typical characters often chosen, and “reminded the literati that such things as eroticism and humor and love and struggle all for part of a human variousness and can once again belong to literature” (18). Garcia Marquez’s incorporation of magic elements into his work, Bell-Villada explains, “actually has the hidden job of underscoring and enhancing the realities under depiction” (20). That is, to say, that Marquez gives meaning behind the magic, creating logic and incorporating history.

Caviedes, Cesar N. “Tangible and Mythical Places in Jose M. Arguedas, Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, and Pablo Neruda.” Geo Journal 38.1 (1996): 99-107.JSTOR. Web. 21 Nov 2011.
Caviedes describes the creation of magic within a text by means of location and description of place. Latin American authors create worlds full of enchantment and mythical creatures and what Caviedes calls “the personality of place” (101). Authors like Marquez taint real places with magical qualities and use “allegoric characters and ghostly atmospheres to evoke a strange spirituality and exoticism” (101).
Myth is very much a part of Hispanic culture and it is through the incorporation of these myths, that Marquez is able to evoke a sense of real magic within the text. Caviedes argues that Marquez creates the setting for a large portion of his works based on his hometown. Marquez’s perceptions of the place including ideas, illusions, assumptions, and myths are manifested in the text, further convincing the reader of it’s realness.

Simpkins, Scott. “The Supplement of Realism.” Twentieth Century Literature 34.2
(1988): 140-154. JSTOR. Web. 21 Nov 2011.
Simpkins explains the theory of defamiliarization in which the magic realist author presents something very real and familiar to the universal reader with an unfamiliar quality; a strangeness. Thus, the reader becomes defamiliarized and suddenly perceives the object in a new light. Defamiliarization is a technique used in order to enhance the perceived reality of a text. However, Simpkins critiques the attempts which authors like Marquez make towards achieving magic realism. Simpkins argues that limitations of language create a problem when striving to change reality. Magic realists attempt to obscure the connection between the signified and the signifier, which Simpkins argues is not possible.